America: Corporate State

At ThinkMarkets, Gerald O’Driscoll, building on a Wall Street Journal column by George Melloan, describes how Fed policy is leading America further down the corporatist road. Here’s a sample:

Melloan doesn’t state it, but there is a name for this economic policy: corporatism. Big government favors selected big business and rewards big labor as a junior partner. It’s not socialism, but the economic component of a fascist political program. Credit administered on a favorable terms is the narcotic that anesthetizes businessmen to the creeping government control of their firms. To paraphrase Lenin, government seizes control of the commanding heights of the economy.

After the loss of economic liberty, can political liberty survive? As Melloan concludes, “it’s not unlike what we witnessed in the depression of the 1930s.”

Serious stuff with far-ranging consequences.

Mysteries of the Universe

If I bribe a congressman, it’s a crime. If a congressman bribes a congressman, it’s glorious democracy in action.

TGIF

Want to know how the politicians justify forcing us to buy health insurance? I discuss their screwball grounds in this week’s TGIF.

"She Left Me for Jesus"

Hayes Carll's great song and video

Progressives Against Free Speech?

I have no desire to take Glenn Beck's side, but there's something noteworthy here nonetheless. Last night on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post suggested that Glenn Beck might properly be silenced by the State. She claimed that an exception to the free-speech doctrine is yelling "fire" in a crowded theater and that Beck every day commits the political equivalent of yelling "fire." A few minutes later she sort of backed off, saying that while he may not be legally liable if his viewers commit violence, he would be morally liable. Olbermann ate this stuff up.

Of course, Huffington got it wrong. The "fire in the crowded theater" matter is not an exception to free speech but a recognition of property rights, of which free speech is but a derivative. There's no right to "free speech" on someone else's property. If you buy a theater ticket and then endanger the audience by falsely yelling "fire," you have (among other things) violated the terms of your being in the theater. There's no need to claim an exception to the free-speech doctrine. Properly conceived, free speech is ultimately a property right.

What's with the progressives? Now that their guy is in power, are they ready to throw out civil liberties so flagrantly?

The Freeman, December 2009, Now Online

Click on the cover on the right. For a blowup of the cover click here.

New Trial for Cory Maye!

From a Facebook note by Radley Balko:

"Cory Maye gets a new trial!"

We're awaiting details.

If you want background on the case, click on the "Free Cory Maye" link in the right column.

War Crimes or Only Crimes

Why are conservatives (and some others) so bent on treating the atrocities committed on September 11, 2001, as acts of war rather than monstrous crimes? They don't look like acts of war. They were not launched by an aggressor nation with the intention of invading and conquering the United States, or overthrowing the government. Despite the enormity of the crimes, the viability of our society is not at risk in the least. Life has gone on rather normally, even allowing for all the ways politicians have exploited the situation in their quest for power. There just seems no good reason to respond by pretending "America is at war." Indeed, the reasons against this response could fill volumes.

So why the insistence that this is war? I think one big reason is that conservatives are, first and foremost, nationalists, and nothing makes nationalism (a form of collectivism) more real than war. Throw in the doctrine of "American exceptionalism" and you have a rationalization for an open-ended "war on terror" in which the world is the battlefield and civil liberties are a luxury we just can't afford.

The war footing also makes it easier to take attention off U.S. interventionist foreign policy, which has seeded the ground for terrorism directed at Americans. One need not excuse the inexcusable acts of September 11 to see how they fit into the big picture. Every empire was struck by terrorists because terrorism is the only low-cost means of retribution available to those who feel aggrieved by imperialism. Most Americans have no clue about what "their" government has been doing in the Middle East for the last couple of generations. It takes shocking ignorance or willful blindness to regard the United States as a gentle sleeping giant until September 11.

So . . . try the criminals in civilian courts. Meanwhile, bring the troops, the CIA, and the meddling diplomats home so this doesn't happen again.

Health Insurance Scam

How can you get insurance for a volitional act? Regardless of one’s position on abortion, there is no denying that it is something a woman chooses. It doesn’t happen without her initiative and consent. My objective here is not moral judgment but precision. For all kinds of reasons a pregnant woman might feel she needs an abortion, but that does not change the fact that it is an action not a happening (as Thomas Szasz would put it).

The rest of TGIF is here.

Veterans Day

As I've done many times before, I quote a passage from the great antiwar movie The Americanization of Emily.

I don't trust people who make bitter reflections about war, Mrs. Barham. It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a Hell it is. And it's always the widows who lead the Memorial Day parades . . . we shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals or warmongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It's the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widows' weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices....

My brother died at Anzio – an everyday soldier’s death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud. . . . [N]ow my other brother can’t wait to reach enlistment age. That’ll be in September. May be ministers and generals who blunder us into wars, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution. What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She’s under constant sedation and terrified she may wake up one morning and find her last son has run off to be brave. [Emphasis added.]